The Age of Motion

In the old OED, the word with the most meanings was "set." It has now been replaced by a new champion more fitting to our frantic age: run.

The word has exploded with the increase in the number of machines and computers: a train runs on tracks, a car runs on gas, an iPad runs apps. But simultaneously, there have also been countless revivals of antique non-mechanical senses: you now run out on someone, you run something past someone. Old “runs” are, in other words, generating new meanings, a demonstration of the living nature of the language.

We think in terms of motion and action, and so we see things running all around us.